How relevant is an Indian special envoy in Sri Lanka?
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
It was a great magnanimity shown to Tamil MPs from Sri Lanka by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh and granting appointments to them to hear grievances or issues still pending in respect of the rehabilitation of war-victims in Sri Lanka. At the same time, there are constraints from Indian side to take instant decisions as expected by TNP MPs especially where the simultaneous consent is not coming from the Sri Lankan regime. It is yet to be known whether Sri Lankan regime will agree for an Envoy from India to monitor the ongoing rehabilitation of Tamil-IDPs at a time when it is yet to confirm the consent for the U.N panel.
Sri Lankan government would have learned to fight against militia over a period of three decades’ experience. The military and civic bodies would not have certainly experienced rehabilitation of this magnitude which is equally challenging like waging war against rebels in difficult topography. The task of the government can be fine tuned through professional management of handling refuges and rehabilitation available with international bodies like U.N and Red Cross. U.N experts will take the lead in channelizing the task by assigning duties to various groups and synchronizing their functions in a professional way.
The answer for the slow or no progress in the Indian assistance of 50,000 dwellings for refugees was very much inherent in the TNP MP’s comments itself. Unless the civil administration does all preliminary compliances and finally identify victims to be eligible for a particular location, fix entitlements family-wise etc and select place for construction of new houses, the Indian assistance will be just a document!
Why Tamil Parties demand for unification of two provinces to confine their freedom only within a single enclave? Instead, Tamil speaking Sri Lankans should retain their democratic right to come out of the shell and settle anywhere in the nation with full fledged rights of a citizen.
It will be ideal for Sri Lanka and its citizens to sustain true democratic rights and freedom to one and all irrespective of race, religion or language they speak. The only challenge will be very clear, that there will be a multi-racial, multi-lingual society while the majority Sinhala-speaking people have to accept Tamils and Muslims also as fellow citizens with equal rights. Correspondingly the ethnic groups should get along with the majority Sinhala speaking communities and facilitate national integration. The ethnic community may be a majority in certain provinces and this should not be misused to disintegrate the nation and its common interests.
Let me recall the lecture made by our Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee well experienced in handling Indo-Lankan issues, when he visited primarily to deliver the 4th Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture on Saturday 14th November, 2009 prior to his darshan at the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Sri Dalada Malingawa Temple in Kandy, as programmed.
He advocated the people of Sri Lanka to make use of the defeat of terrorism and secessionism to permanently change the complexion of inter-ethnic relations for the betterment of the island nation. It will be important for everybody in the island nation to realize that a Political settlement is not a ‘zero-sum game’. As a down-to-earth advice, he rightly cited India’s experience in managing multi-religious and multi-cultural societies. His speech gave thrust on democratic principles of devolution of power, equality for accessing opportunities and equal status before constitution that facilitated India to address divisive tendencies of all sorts. He had reiterated that “clear separation of powers, rule of law, social justice, secularism, free press, vigilant citizens and civil groups have ensured that threats to your sovereignty from within or without are tackled with an inner strength that can come only through the ballot”.
If the advice of Pranab Mukherjee was taken note of by Sri Lankan politicians, it will be certain that the Rajapaksa regime will not enhance militarization in the North and attempt to disintegrate the ethnic presence and its majority in regions where Tamil population was traditionally in predominance, by carving out fresh colonies with the Sinhala speaking citizens. Besides the Tamil minority’s politicians will not instigate people not to think of a nation in a broader prospective with Tamil as one of language of the nation along with the main language Sinhalese spoken by the majority, but prompt to evince undue interest for a linguistic enclave of Tamil entity. From this anyone can realize that the so-called political settlement and ethnic reconciliation will not be just complementary to each other but will even become equivalence.
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
It was a great magnanimity shown to Tamil MPs from Sri Lanka by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh and granting appointments to them to hear grievances or issues still pending in respect of the rehabilitation of war-victims in Sri Lanka. At the same time, there are constraints from Indian side to take instant decisions as expected by TNP MPs especially where the simultaneous consent is not coming from the Sri Lankan regime. It is yet to be known whether Sri Lankan regime will agree for an Envoy from India to monitor the ongoing rehabilitation of Tamil-IDPs at a time when it is yet to confirm the consent for the U.N panel.
Sri Lankan government would have learned to fight against militia over a period of three decades’ experience. The military and civic bodies would not have certainly experienced rehabilitation of this magnitude which is equally challenging like waging war against rebels in difficult topography. The task of the government can be fine tuned through professional management of handling refuges and rehabilitation available with international bodies like U.N and Red Cross. U.N experts will take the lead in channelizing the task by assigning duties to various groups and synchronizing their functions in a professional way.
The answer for the slow or no progress in the Indian assistance of 50,000 dwellings for refugees was very much inherent in the TNP MP’s comments itself. Unless the civil administration does all preliminary compliances and finally identify victims to be eligible for a particular location, fix entitlements family-wise etc and select place for construction of new houses, the Indian assistance will be just a document!
Why Tamil Parties demand for unification of two provinces to confine their freedom only within a single enclave? Instead, Tamil speaking Sri Lankans should retain their democratic right to come out of the shell and settle anywhere in the nation with full fledged rights of a citizen.
It will be ideal for Sri Lanka and its citizens to sustain true democratic rights and freedom to one and all irrespective of race, religion or language they speak. The only challenge will be very clear, that there will be a multi-racial, multi-lingual society while the majority Sinhala-speaking people have to accept Tamils and Muslims also as fellow citizens with equal rights. Correspondingly the ethnic groups should get along with the majority Sinhala speaking communities and facilitate national integration. The ethnic community may be a majority in certain provinces and this should not be misused to disintegrate the nation and its common interests.
Let me recall the lecture made by our Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee well experienced in handling Indo-Lankan issues, when he visited primarily to deliver the 4th Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture on Saturday 14th November, 2009 prior to his darshan at the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Sri Dalada Malingawa Temple in Kandy, as programmed.
He advocated the people of Sri Lanka to make use of the defeat of terrorism and secessionism to permanently change the complexion of inter-ethnic relations for the betterment of the island nation. It will be important for everybody in the island nation to realize that a Political settlement is not a ‘zero-sum game’. As a down-to-earth advice, he rightly cited India’s experience in managing multi-religious and multi-cultural societies. His speech gave thrust on democratic principles of devolution of power, equality for accessing opportunities and equal status before constitution that facilitated India to address divisive tendencies of all sorts. He had reiterated that “clear separation of powers, rule of law, social justice, secularism, free press, vigilant citizens and civil groups have ensured that threats to your sovereignty from within or without are tackled with an inner strength that can come only through the ballot”.
If the advice of Pranab Mukherjee was taken note of by Sri Lankan politicians, it will be certain that the Rajapaksa regime will not enhance militarization in the North and attempt to disintegrate the ethnic presence and its majority in regions where Tamil population was traditionally in predominance, by carving out fresh colonies with the Sinhala speaking citizens. Besides the Tamil minority’s politicians will not instigate people not to think of a nation in a broader prospective with Tamil as one of language of the nation along with the main language Sinhalese spoken by the majority, but prompt to evince undue interest for a linguistic enclave of Tamil entity. From this anyone can realize that the so-called political settlement and ethnic reconciliation will not be just complementary to each other but will even become equivalence.
No comments:
Post a Comment